IP Glossary: I

Order of a court to do or refrain from doing something on pain of punishment for disobedience.

Intellectual Assets

Sometimes called “Intellectual Property Assets”. Creations of the mind that give one business a competitive advantage over all others such a new product or manufacturing process, a brand name or a blockbuster novel. Intellectual assets are grouped into four categories: brands, designs, technology or creativity.

Intellectual Property (“IP”)

The collective name for the bundle of laws that protect investment in an intellectual asset. Example include patents,copyrights, trade marks and registered and unregistered designs.

Intellectual property audit

A systematic review of the intellectual assets owned or used by a business, their legal protection, the title by which they are held or licensed and their value to the business.

A specialist court within the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice which hears IP cases for damages or an account of profits under £500,000 which can be determined in one or at most 2 days. IPEC has a small claims track for claims for damages under £10,000.

intellectual property office (“IPO”)

A national or intergovernmental office for the registration of patents, registered designs, trade marks or other IPR. The Intellectual Property Office is the intellectual property office for the UK. The EU IPO is the office that grants EU trade marks and registered Community designs for the European Union.

The operating name of the Patent Office, an executive agency of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The IPO performs executive and quasi-judicial functions. Executive functions include the granting of patents and the registration of trade marks and registered designs. Judicial functions include the adjudication of disputes between members of the public and those claiming IPR and the state.

Intellectual Property Right (“IPR”)

A right of action such as the right to stop copying in copyright or the right to prevent others from making, importing, disposing of or using anyting that falls within any of the claims of a patent.

Intellectual property strategy

Using IP law as a tool to achieve a business objctive

Invention

A new product or process.

Inventor

A person who made an invention

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An exception to the rule that a trade mark registration cannot be challenged for non-use in the first 5 years after registration is where the application to register the trade mark was made in "bad faith". The legislative mechanism is provided by s.47 (1) of the Trade Marks Act 1994:

"The registration of a trade mark may be declared invalid on the ground that the trade mark was registered in breach of section 3 or any of the provisions referred to in that section (absolute grounds for refusal of registration)."

Subsection (6) of s.3 provides:

"A trade mark shall not be registered if or to the extent that the application is made in bad faith."

What the Appeal was about
The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co ("Lilly") has developed a drug called pemetrexed which it markets under the brand name Alimta for the treatment of various types of cancer. Used on its own, pemetrexed has unpleasant side effects that can sometimes be fatal but these can be avoided when it is administered as a compound called pemetrexed disodium in combination with vitamin B12.

The use of pemetrexed disodium in the manufacture of a medicament for use in combination with vitamin B12 (and, optionally, folic acid) for the treatment of cancer is monopolized in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and a number of other European countries by European patent number No 1 313 508. There are also corresponding patents for the same invention in many other countries around the world.